Animus

by Scott McKay

  And around noon on that balmy tenth-month day, the whistles rang out to signal that battle had been joined.

  David was at the head of the line of militia; the Udar rode a wedge into the middle. Shots rang out to his east, and as his troops turned left to envelop the Udar, a hail of arrows rained in. The first volley of rifle shots had thinned the enemy’s ranks considerably, but had barely dissuaded the Udar warriors. In no time they were in close combat with the enemy, and the militiamen began to fall.

  Including their commander. David was hit with an arrow to the thigh, and though he’d managed to land a pistol shot to the stomach of the bowman as he rode in, the Udar then unstowed his halberd and plunged it into David’s ribs, which knocked him off his horse and took him out of the battle. His copper-mesh waistcoat might have been of some use against a Gazol, but a mighty thrust from a Ba’kalo was more than the armored garment was built for. David was now defenseless, on his back on the stony ridge with six inches of spear piercing his guts.

  Before the Udar could finish him, David could see the man’s head surrender much of its mass. In rode young Will, who had delivered a rifle shot through the Udar’s temple as he thundered into the fray. Forling cocked and fired again, felling another Udar with a shot to the head. He then plugged a third Udar with a rifle shot to the chest, this one on foot as he had dismounted to engage a militiaman to David’s right.

  At that point, David lost consciousness.

  …

  “Uncle David, are you still with us?”

  It was Robert. He was holding a canteen to his uncle’s lips. David came to with excruciating pain in his right side and thigh, but he hadn’t quite died yet.

  “Barely,” he croaked, and took a swig from the proffered canteen. “This needs to be whisky.”

  “He’s not going to be able to ride.” Will said. “We’re going to have to rig up a stretcher for him.”

  “Is it over?” asked David. “Did we win?”

  “We did,” Robert replied. “Not without cost though. Thirty-four dead, twenty wounded, most not so bad they’re out of action. But we wiped them out. All dead but one prisoner we’re going to take back to Sutton Hill.”

  By the Saints, David thought. Some victory this was. More than a third of his force was now dead or injured, and now he was a liability if not yet a corpse. My military career is finished one way or the other.

  Forling was busy with the others scrounging together a travois for David out of the wooden poles of the Udar halberds, and in short order had a means to convey him back to the main camp.

  “Looks like we’ve found a use for these Udar after all,” Robert quipped as the men looted the enemy corpses of weapons and equipment. After tightly bandaging his side and thigh, he was carefully lifted onto the travois, and as the other wounded were tended to and remounted as best they could, the party began slowly making its way back to the east.

  Meanwhile, all hell had broken loose on Sutton Hill.

  …

  TWENTY SEVEN

  The Mouth of the Cave – Afternoon (Second Day)

  The pace had been considerable, far brisker than Sarah would have thought possible given the circumstances of the Udar raiding party and what it consisted of.

  They had packed up last night’s camp with impressive speed after making a human sacrifice out of a captive who had attempted to escape, and then the captives had their collars tied to long wooden poles, which were then attached by rope to saddles of horses riding in front and in back of their groups of ten. And in minutes, they were off.

  Little concern was paid to the convenience of the captives, and Sarah saw several cut loose from their coffles as they failed to keep up with the march. Those unfortunate women were doused with what looked like crude oil, hogtied and then lit on fire as an example to the rest. Sarah counted a dozen such horrific episodes along the march.

  But once every hour or so as they were marching southwest, their captors would come to each coffle and, one by one, remove each captive’s gag and pour a swig of water from a leather canteen into her mouth. And the captors would also periodically pass through the coffles and deliver swigs of the intoxicating marwai liquid. There were no bathroom breaks, which for a second day didn’t appear to be needed. Sarah started thinking there was maybe something about marwai that made the need to pee go away.

  And Sarah noticed that very few of the Udar traveling along with the captives were men. Most of their warriors appeared to have ridden off in several directions as the march progressed, perhaps scouting the path forward or guarding against pursuers.

  Dare I even dream about pursuers? Sarah thought. Should I even hope that?

  She knew she should. Though she hadn’t read the book written by Georgia Broadham of her time as a captive of the Udar, Sarah did know of her story. In Mrs. Broadham’s case it took six months, but she did get rescued. And that, Sarah determined, would be her fate.

  Somebody will come and take me home, she thought. It might take years, but it will happen. I’m going to keep my head about me and do what it takes to stay alive, and then I will get to go home to my family.

  Or what’s left of it.

  But as the sun began to make its descent toward the peaks of the Rogers Range, which had drawn progressively closer as the march continued throughout the day, Sarah found it more and more difficult to maintain that faith. It really wasn’t rescue that drove her forward, she thought. It was not wanting to be burned alive out here.

  The women escorting the prisoners didn’t just have the threat of immolation as a motivational tool. They each brandished three-foot long quirts made of rawhide with handles of bone, and they were not sparing with their use. Marching last in her coffle, Sarah felt the sting on her backside a dozen times as an exhortation to speed her pace.

  At long last, the mountains were within shouting range, as the ground rose to a jagged, diagonal set of cliffs. They had also come to the coast, as to her left Sarah could see the broad expanse of Watkins Gulf. The shoreline cut a path in front of them in close proximity to the cliffside.

  This was going to be their campsite for the night. Sarah knew that, because tents were in place at that site even before the captors began making camp with their own supplies and equipment.

  It wasn’t just their group here. There were more Udar than the 200 or so women that she’d seen escorting them during the day. But the vast majority of the people already at the camp when they arrived were also women.

  So where were the men? she thought. If they were all out defending the camp, and the Ardenians did come to save them, a major battle was inevitable.

  One by one the coffles were marched into place in a holding area in the middle of the tent village, and then the captors indicated by use of the quirt that the prisoners should kneel. The wooden poles were removed, and Sarah and her compatriots were left in the sand under guard.

  She was one day closer to Uris Udar, and one day closer to slavery.

  The women came around again distributing swigs of marwai. Sarah couldn’t really tell, but she was beginning to think they were getting a bit more frequent with the dosage of the drug. The effect it was having on her was strange. She wasn’t getting as high with each swig, but the effect was starting to become continuous, and it affected her thoughts.

  Namely, she really missed her conversations with Charlotte. She was hoping she’d get to have another one. She had also been thinking about the kiss Charlotte had given her the night before and how sweet she’d been. Most of all, Sarah felt really guilty about having told Charlotte off the way she had that morning. That had clearly made Charlotte angry–really angry–and Sarah regretted treating her so shabbily. Charlotte really was her friend, the only one she had in the camp, and she’d abused and rejected that friendship.

  If Charlotte would talk to her again, she was thinking, she would stop being so bitchy to her and she’d be more agreeable. Whatever Charlotte wanted her to do, she’d do.

  And then Sarah stopped her
self. What in the world are you thinking? she screamed internally. That’s absolutely crazy. Sarah realized that was the marwai thinking for her, and the resulting internal dialogue was beginning to be very dangerous.

  This is how they get us to agree to be javeen, she thought. And it’s awfully effective.

  These people weren’t as stupid as they appeared. They were diabolical, and when it came to making slaves out of Ardenian girls they knew what they were doing.

  Sarah noticed something as she surveyed the busy scene in front of her. There was a slit in the cliffside to her right, on a rise about thirty feet up, with a path leading down into the camp. It wasn’t gigantic, but it certainly seemed big enough to walk through. And it didn’t look like it was there naturally. In fact, it had all the appearance of having been either blasted or dug out of the mountain.

  She wondered where that cave led. She had a pretty good idea that it went west into the mountains, and came out somewhere very unfriendly on the other side.

  …

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Sutton Hill – Afternoon (Second Day)

  Latham wasn’t a bad shot, and he’d killed a man in combat before. After what he’d seen along the way south of Barley Point, he had no qualms about killing again. Nevertheless, as he lined up his shot at the Udar rider coming up Sutton Hill from the south, he hesitated.

  It was fear, he thought. Just fear. Everybody feels it in battle. Nothing to be ashamed of, you just have to fight through it. Pull the trigger and kill this guy.

  He did, and scored a hit center mass. But the man didn’t fall off his horse. He kept coming, at a high speed – closing from seventy-five yards to fifty, then forty…

  Latham shot him again. This time the bullet hit higher, splitting the man’s lower jaw and knocking him back off his horse.

  He reloaded his rifle and searched for another target. Finding one, he pulled the trigger and missed an Udar riding a bit to his left. As he aimed again, he saw the man come off his horse from another Ardenian bullet. Latham scanned for another potential victim.

  Finding one coming up to his right, he dropped the man with a bullet to the right shoulder. You won’t be much use with your sword now, he thought. Might as well go home.

  Little chance of that. The force of Udars attacking up Sutton Hill from the south numbered close to 300, all on horseback, and they were the very definition of reckless abandon. There was no nuance or guile in the frontal assault the enemy was attempting against the Terhune contingent, diminished as it was by the Colonel’s choice to send 147 men west to counter the riders they’d seen attempting a flanking maneuver. Terhune had been correct to split his force, though that was risky. They were perhaps now outnumbered here against this party of savages, but not by an enormous measure; when David Stuart’s force left camp, they’d still had 285 men.

  The Ardenians held the all-important high ground on Sutton Hill, which, as Latham and the rest of the Terhune contingent poured fire on the advancing Udar, was worth double or triple their number. Just as it had been in Dunnan’s War.

  The enemy was losing warriors at a ghastly pace, but not enough to dissuade their charge. Arrows flew overhead in flocks, as Latham and the rest of the Ardenians took cover with saddles and other equipment set in front as shields at the edge of the rise. A few arrows here and there lodged among the horses, which were collected in the middle of Sutton Hill.

  As Latham fired again, missing wide of a gigantic Udar galloping directly for him, to his right he could see one of the warriors spear an Ardenian with a halberd. He took better aim and drilled the huge man through the heart with a rifle shot. The Udar who’d crested the hill and killed one of Latham’s colleagues was unhorsed by a pistol shot from Terhune; the colonel fired another bullet in him as he landed on his back from the fall.

  However, the Udar were getting closer to the top of the hill. There were still at least half of them in the battle. If they managed to turn this into a hand-to-hand fight, there was no guarantee of Ardenian victory and even less of managing to save the survivors of the previous day’s raids on Dunnan’s Claim.

  Just then, Latham could see a line of riders to his right cutting across the hillside behind the Udar. It was, he deduced, most of Stuart’s detachment from Dunnansport and Battleford. Latham estimated ninety or so riders, led by the Forling boy. He appeared to be an expert shot, scoring kills time after time with his rifle while at a gallop, and leading the Ardenians to a flanking maneuver which all but trapped the enemy on that hillside. Several of the Udar turned to face the cavalrymen pumping bullets into the rear of their ranks, and the charge up the hill stalled.

  The defenders of Sutton Hill then poured on their rifle fire, and the battle quickly turned Ardenia’s way. It was over in just a few minutes from there, the last shot fired knocking an Udar off his horse as he attempted to flee to the southeast. Only two or three dozen of the enemy managed a successful retreat.

  Not a rout. Almost an annihilation.

  Forling rode up the hill to a chorus of “Huzzah!” from the defenders. His comrades followed. To the west, another contingent of riders approached much more slowly.

  “We’ve engaged the enemy to the west,” Forling reported as he dismounted in Terhune’s presence, “and closed and destroyed him. Took some casualties, though. Thirty-four dead and twenty wounded. That’ll be the wounded coming up now.”

  “Where’s your commander?” asked Terhune.

  “He’s one of the wounded, sir.”

  Damned poor fortune, thought Latham. The Stuarts can hardly catch a break this week.

  As the camp’s three doctors tended to the wounded, Stuart’s travois mounted the hill. Latham helped carry his stretcher, untied from the horse drawing it, to the hilltop. The aging one-armed man looked white as a sheet.

  “A capital victory,” he croaked in Terhune’s direction. “You have my congratulations, colonel.”

  “Too expensive if we lose you, commander,” the colonel said. “Don’t you stop fighting.”

  “I’ve had it,” Stuart said. And to Robert, who had been with him for the ride back from the battle to the west, he shot a fervent look. “Listen to me, boy,” he said, feebly.

  “Yes, Uncle?”

  “Tell your aunt, tell Rebecca…” he trailed off, then summoned his strength again. “You tell her I love her. You tell her I’ll be waiting for her in the afterlife. And tell your cousins Josey and Peter, tell them their father’s going to miss them.”

  David gasped in pain.

  “Robert,” he wheezed. “get Sarah. You go get Sarah.”

  “You think they have her, Uncle?”

  “Go get Sarah. Bring her home safe. Ethan and Hannah too. You’re the head of the family now. Don’t let them down.”

  “I will, Uncle. I will. Stay with me. We can’t lose you. Fight for us!”

  “Gone to see my brother,” he whispered. “See your dad and mom. Give ‘em your love.”

  And with that he was no more.

  …

  TWENTY NINE

  Watkins Gulf – Evening (Second Day)

  There was good news and bad news on the communications front where Adelaide was concerned.

  On the good side, Yarmouth had finally come within signaling range. The sidewheeler was fast gaining on Adelaide’s position as the frigate came west, and the two ships were able to trade news of the ongoing efforts to place military assets on the scene. Because of that development, Patrick had Adelaide increase its speed heading west to eighteen knots toward Strongstead.

  On the negative side, they’d lost contact with the troops on Sutton Hill, and Patrick was concerned they wouldn’t be able to re-establish it as they moved west. Because of the topography of the Watkins Gulf coastline this far west of Barley Point, line of sight to Sutton Hill was going to be chancy. Patrick assumed the Terhune camp would be moving quickly to close with the enemy. That ought to bring them closer to his position, but it also might put them behind one of the smaller hills which
came nearer to the coastline.

  They’d been signaling with the mirror heliograph in the afternoon, and now that dusk was arriving, they were doing so by signal lantern. Nothing in the way of a response so far.

  And then there was the lack of news from Castamere and Louise. The other two frigates were said to be on the way. Yarmouth had relayed an estimate from the Admiralty of Castamere’s arrival by midnight tonight, with Louise to follow by dawn or earlier. On his previous timetable, those arrivals would have been acceptable to Patrick, but given the revelations offered earlier in the day by his Udar prisoner Edyene, who’d said the warriors rampaging through Dunnan’s Claim two days earlier were only the lead element of a gigantic invasion force massing to the west and south, he didn’t know if his support frigates would arrive in time to make a difference.

  But finally, as the sun dipped into the horizon, a blinking light was seen on the ridgeline to the ship’s starboard.

  “Signal comin’ in!” came the call from Adelaide’s observation tower.

  “They say they engaged a war party on Sutton Hill and had nearly 300 kills.” Adelaide’s crew broke into cheers. “Movin’ westward in search of the enemy’s base camp. Will locate tonight and close with them in the morning. They’re going to signal us on the hour with latest developments.”

  Patrick had Adelaide send a message in return. “YARMOUTH APPROACHING FROM EAST FOR EVAC. CASTAMERE, LOUISE ARRIVE BY DAWN. WILL CONTINUE SEARCH FOR ENEMY CAMP BY SEA AND MAINTAIN CONTACT.”

  Broadham appeared on the bridge.

  “You’ve made your interrogations of all nine of our guests?” Patrick queried.

  “All nine, sir,” said Broadham. “Only one truly productive.”

  The commander gave a wry smile. Yeah, I kinda like her too, he thought.